The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) sets forth standards by which telecommunications providers assist law enforcement agencies (LEAs) surveillance activities. When an LEA has obtained a court order authorizing a wiretap for a target's directory number, a telecommunications provider is required to provide an unobtrusive, i.e., not noticeable by the target, wiretap of all calls initiated by or directed to the target's directory number.
At times, a single switch may support numerous targets, and further, those targets may be targeted by multiple LEAs. If there are five LEAs and each LEA requires a tap for both the talking path to the target and the talking path from the target, and if, for example, there are 25 targets on the switch, reserving lines for each of the wiretaps required for this circumstance would take 250 lines, thereby taking up a significant percentage of the switch resources. If a high-traffic situation, such as an emergency, occurred during this time period, there may not be sufficient resources to handle the situation.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and apparatus for supporting LEA activities without burdening switch resources.